start here
Mixer can do a LOT. It has a ton of powerful and useful functionality, but in the early stages, your focus should be on database growth and the associated features. So here is a quick guide to help you know where to put your early efforts:
Structuring Campaigns to Promote Database Growth. Whether you are starting from scratch or have an existing database to access at launch, continued growth is essential. Be sure to read through the Recruitment and Activation tips to help structure your campaigns accordingly.
Graphic Assets. To launch, you’ll need the following in place:
Banners
Mobile Banners
Promo Image
Images associated with auctions and events
Auctions. You’re going to want to launch with a mix of big and small ticket items. Read through the Auction section here.
Surveys: Have at least a couple of surveys available before launch. Survey tips can be found here.
GROW YOUR DATABASE
Like any database platform, database growth is fundamental to achieving success with Mixer. You need to recruit new members, and you need to activate existing members.
There are three different but overlapping campaigns, two of which need to run all the time. Build them into the fabric of your on-air and online promotion culture. Let’s look for a minute at each:
RECRUITMENT
Recruitment is about NEW membership.
Keep it simple. “Rate. Earn. Get.” “Listen. Rate. Earn.” “Have a say in what we play.”
Don’t just alert existing members to the cool premiums available for auction. Promote the premiums as a reason for new members to join.
Some listeners simply want a voice. The ability to rate songs will be enough. Drive song ratings and new membership by reminding people they can have a say in what you play. Use Mixer Charts to help promote this (this also helps activate existing members).
Others will be more interested in premiums. Talk about the auction items on-air. Remind listeners they can bid by joining.
Make sure you’re always ready to “greet” new members. This means you ALWAYS have current banners, fresh auctions, available surveys, etc. This is their first impression. Don’t ask them to sign up and then appear stale.
Be sure you always have some small premiums available for auction. A new member doesn’t have many points. If they log-in for the first time and every premium seems unattainable, they may be discouraged. See other auction tips here.
Never. Stop. Recruiting.
RETENTION
Retention is about engaging the existing membership.
Update auctions often and promote new items.
Don’t put everything up for bidding at once.
Give them exclusives. Make their membership special.
Give them exclusive or early access to a pre-sale code (put the code on a banner).
Make membership a requirement to win tickets to an in-studio performance. This feels exclusive!
Use event check-ins as a way to qualify for a premium giveaway. For example, if you’re sponsoring a happy hour party at a client’s restaurant/bar, create an event for it, and tell you members that everyone who comes to the happy hour and checks-in is qualified to win it. This also gives you valuable data you can deliver to the client, quantifying the traffic you’re able to drive to their location.
Between Recruitment and Retention, you should run 40 - 45 recorded promos each week, with half dedicated to Recruitment, and half dedicated to Retention.
REENGAGEMENT
Reengagement is about waking up existing members who aren’t participating.
This lives off-air.
Use email segmentation to target them with relevant content.
Draw them back in with an announcement of a big premium on the auction block, or an opportunity to bid on an exclusive, experiential premium.
AUCTIONS
General Auction Best Practices
- Update auctions often and promote new items, on-air and online.
- Don’t put everything you have in your prize closet up for bidding at once.
- Don’t underestimate the value of smaller items! Not everyone is going to try and bid on big-ticket items, but signed CDs, posters, t-shirts, etc, with low-minimum bids, can help maintain engagement and generate participation.
- Be sure to tag your auctions. This is a great opportunity to develop richer listener profiles. See more about tags here.
- Process auction winners ASAP. This is important.
- Use auctions to drive new membership! Promote them on-air and online. If non-member listeners are hearing about cool prizes they can earn, they’ll be encouraged to join.How long should an auction last?
This can vary, but generally 5-7 days is a good length. Larger, experience-based premiums that have a higher minimum bid should generally last longer, two weeks or more, allowing listeners time to accumulate points.
How should minimum bids be determined?
Think in terms of how your listeners are accumulating points. If you’re going to set a minimum bid at a high number (500 points or more), make sure you either are allowing ample time for the auction to run so that listeners can earn the required points, or that you’re offering additional ways in which they can earn, such as surveys or event check-ins.
It doesn’t make sense to start an item at 2000 points if the only way they can earn points is by rating songs, at 5 points per rating. While that might satisfy existing users who have previously accumulated a lot of points, it will discourage new members because the minimum bid may seem unattainable.
Are auction winners notified automatically?
You can decide. There are default Auction Winner Instructions (found on Station Settings/Basic Info page) to help minimize the processing efforts. Your winner will receive an automated email that will say “Congratulations, you’re the winner of [auction item name].” You can customize the info that follows. We suggest something along the lines of this:
”If your prize is a digital download, coupon code, or anything that can be delivered digitally, we'll send you an email with all the details about collecting your prize. If your prize requires pickup, please come to the station offices, Monday - Friday between 9 am and 5 pm, located at [address]. Tell the receptionist you've come to collect an auction item. Please be sure to bring valid photo ID!”
You can also override the default instructions at the item-level, so if there are instructions that are specific to that particular item, you can insert them when building the auction. See the image for reference.
You can also turn notifications off completely, simply by checking the “Notifications OFF” checkbox in the Create Auction window. Just be sure you follow-up with your winners!
SURVEYS
Surveys are vital. For the listener, they can be fun and an easy way to earn points. For you, they can be an easy way to learn more about your listeners. For your client, they can be a path to greater insights to their potential customer.
Listeners can only answer a survey once.
Encourage participation by assigning a high point value to your surveys.
Be sure to tag your surveys. This is a great opportunity to develop richer listener profiles. See more about tags here.
Keep surveys short. Depending on the nature of the questions, 5 - 10 is acceptable. If it’s fun, silly and light, more is ok. But if it’s serious in nature, keep it around 4 - 6 questions.
You should always have some fun, introductory surveys active for new members. Don’t let these expire. Localize them. Favorite local sports franchise, taco stand, local craft brewery, etc.
Outside of the fun introductory stuff, be careful that you don’t overdo it with surveys. You want accurate and usable responses. If surveys are overdone, listeners will click through them mindlessly just for the points reward.
Partner with a client to craft questions that they need answered. Don’t forget - after the survey closes, you have the ability to send an email to the survey participants. Work with your client to maximize this opportunity.
Even when crafting a client-related survey, throw in a fun question or two.
EVENTS
Events can be created through the Admin Backoffice, and accessed by your listeners via the mobile app. They can check-in at an event in exchange for points.
Events don’t have to be concerts. They can be the location of a live-remote, they can be a client’s address, they can be any location or event that you want your listeners to visit.
When assigning a point-value to an event, consider how difficult or easy it is for listeners to attend, how valuable it is to your client, and how valuable it is to you.
Be sure to tag your events. You can learn a lot about listeners by knowing the places they go. Learn more about tags here.
Don’t let the end of the event be the end of the value! After the event, you have a list (that you can view and export) of people who are interested in something very specific. Use this information to re-approach your client. Consider working with your client to create an email, which you can target specifically to event attendees, with an offer.
Listeners can only check-in to an event once.
TAGS
Tagging your listeners is the key to building rich, dynamic consumer profiles. Over time, you’ll be able to break your database out into segments, based on listener interests, tastes and behaviors. This offers tremendous value to clients. Here’s how it works:
For this example, let’s assume you are partnered with a camping supply store. They have provided you with premiums for auction and questions for a survey. You’ve also planned a live-remote from the store.
Before you add the auction items, build the survey, create the event (for the live-remote) and post a banner advertising the campaign, let’s create the tags.
Navigate to the Tags button on the left-hand navigation bar.
Click “Add Tag”. For this campaign, you may want several, such as “camping”, “hunting”, “fishing”, “hiking”, and “outdoors”. Always include the client’s name as a tag!
When you create your auctions, survey and event, you’ll be able to add all of your tags in the “Tags” field.
Every listener that bids on the auction items, participates in the survey, or checks-in at the live-remote will be tagged with each of the tags you’ve assigned to the campaign. This is invisible to the listener.
Now you’re building a database of listeners that you know are interested in camping, hunting, fishing, hiking and outdoors. This information strengthens your relationship with the existing client, opens doors to new clients, and allows you to segment listeners so you can serve them with the most relevant, interesting content.
Tag all of your campaigns!
Texting
Long-code texting is a great way to drive engagement and participation with listeners in real-time. It’s an essential tool for on-air talent and/or their producers. Long-code texting is simply 10-digit texting, just like your personal cell phone. So in theory, it’s no different than texting your friends.
If you need a how-to, please visit this page. Below are some tips and best-practices to ensure you are getting the most out of your texting functionality.
Respond! Of course not every incoming text will require a response, but your listeners want to hear from you. This is an incredibly easy way to give them a feeling of personal, one-to-one connection with the air-talent.
If you’re asking listeners to text you with feedback about a particular topic, give them a shout-out on-air as you read their responses.
If you are seeing a lot of incoming messages from “Not Registered” users, remind them of the value and benefits of joining. Use it as a recruitment tool.
If you sell a sponsorship to your studio text line, don’t just stop with the mentions in the auto-reply. Ask the sponsor for premiums for use in the Auctions, create a sponsor-related survey and geo-fenced event (when applicable). Include a shortened URL in the auto-reply driving people to the login page, so they can either login and engage further with the client, or create a new membership.
EMAIL SEGMENTATION
Mixer’s Email Segmentation is an incredibly efficient way to deliver the most relevant content to a specific group of your listeners. The open and click rates are significantly higher when you can target your audience this way. Let’s look at the different ways you can segment the database.
First, create your email. Simply click “Add Email Blast”, type the subject, message body and adjust the sender’s name as needed. Click save.
Once you’ve saved your email, click on the ellipsis to the far right, just past the Edit button. Select Send to Segment.
The segmentation window opens. Here you can choose to segment your audience based on:
Song/Artist Ratings: Want to target everyone who loves the new single? Or maybe everyone who has ever loved a song by a certain artist? Now you can.
Survey Participants: Maybe the camping store from our Tags example wants to thank your participants by sending them a coupon code for 10% off. Here you can send everyone who participated in a specific survey an email.
Auction Participants: Just like the survey option, send everyone who bid on an item an email. Only one of them won it, but they’re all interested in it. Send them an incentive to drive them to your client.
Favorite Band: Listeners include their favorite band upon sign-up. Send everyone who loves a specific artist an email, regardless of whether they’ve ever rated a song.
mixer charts
There are several great ways to use your aggregated song research data, all of which can be sponsored.
A weekly (or monthly) listener countdown. Run a report in your Custom Aggregation page for the highest-rated titles of the week. Set a minimum sample size if you choose. “These are the highest-rated songs of the week, as decided by YOU, the listener, brought to you by [sponsor].” (Bonus - make sure that sponsor has a premium available for auction, a sponsor-specific survey or both during this timeframe.)
Year-End Top 100. Run a report on the calendar-year and pull the top 100 titles. Make this a sponsored year-end countdown. Coordinate with the sponsor to include premiums for auction.
Artist chart. Is a core-artist releasing a new album, single, or coming to town on tour? Use your aggregated data to create an artist-specific countdown to drive awareness and song-ratings. If it’s a concert, create an event so your listeners can check-in to the concert for additional points.
pre-launch checklist
So we’ve installed and deployed and you’re ready to announce the new program to your listeners. Make sure you’re ready. Planning your launch around a station-sponsored event, concert, single debut or core-artist album release is always a good idea, simply because it affords you the opportunity to incorporate related premiums (tickets, CDs, merch, etc) at launch. Here’s a quick checklist you should review before you invite your listeners to participate:
Are all your graphic assets in place?
Banners
Mobile Banners
Do you have assets ready to post on the station’s official site and social, directing people to the sign-up URL, and/or the mobile app download links?
Ad(s) on user homepage
Promotional Image on user homepage
Are auctions in place, both big-ticket premiums and low-dollar smaller items?
Do you have a least a couple of surveys waiting for new members?
Do you have an ongoing event or two posted? This is not mandatory, but the more available content you can provide for launch, the better!
Image sizes
Here’s a list of optimum image sizes for all of the graphic assets you’ll need on Mixer:
Background Image (will appear as background on pre-login and post-login listener pages): 1200 x 540
Banners: 1200 x 540
Promotional Image: 600 x 270
Ad: 600 x 270
Mobile Banner: 900 x 1350 (Template Download)
Auction Detail: 800 x 500
Event Image: 800 x 500